The invention relates to fiber placement machines which may employ multiple strands or tows of fiber which are pulled from a creel assembly and placed on a surface or workpiece. Such machines may include filament winders, which utilize plural filaments when winding rotary shapes.
Fiber placement machines may also be employed to place tows of fiber on flat, curved, or compound contours. Prior art assemblies include filament winding machines which deploy plural relatively parallel filaments on a rotary member, where the filaments pass through a payout eye which may be rotated about an axis parallel to the longitudinal path travelled by the filaments to keep the filaments spaced for a variety of winding angles as the paid-out filaments traverse the rotary axis of the member to be wound.
Applicant's assembly is directed to a machine which utilizes a creel assembly for supplying filamentous composite material to a laydown surface, where the machine system includes at least a multi-axis manipulator wrist which may orient the laydown tip of the assembly through a wide variety of spatial orientations with respect to the supply creel assembly.
It is an object of the invention to provide spacing control for the fiber tows, preferably with virtually no drag, and regardless of head orientation.